The future of opera

‘It’s an occult-mystery film opera.’ This is how Michel van der Aa describes his new opera, which opened last Friday at the Barbican (and is reviewed here). I had similar difficulties in describing the nature of many of the shows that I produced at Mica Moca, a performance and exhibition venue in Berlin. Over the course of five months, we produced more than 350 different shows of every genre you could think of and some I’d never heard of (check out Japanese free noise) and yet, by the end, I felt that what we’d actually produced was one huge opera.

We’re living in very interesting and exciting times for the world of performance — when boundaries between art forms are breaking down and audience’s expectations are shifting. And opera has the opportunity to benefit most. As the most multimedia of art forms, it has the right to roam across this changing cultural landscape, collecting from others and so continually reinventing itself.